The present invention relates generally to medical needle devices, and more particularly to an improved, passive safety needle device featuring a sheath assembly which is designed to be outwardly deployable and enclose the exposed portion of an affixed needle therewithin so as to protect its user against inadvertent needle-stick injuries.
Needle-stick injuries are common and are of great concern in today's health-care industry. A vast majority of these injuries occur while withdrawing conventional Huber needles from implanted IV ports after administering medicants such as antibiotics or chemotherapy.
More specifically, a great deal of force is required during Huber needle withdrawal to overcome the resistance of the port's septum. Since a non-dominant hand is typically used in this process to secure the implanted port, it often becomes stuck on the rebound of the Huber needle.
Because a Huber needle is utilized for venous access, such needle-stick injury as described above presents a high risk for pathogen transmission. An exposed and/or injured health-care worker must be tested for various blood-borne pathogens such as hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV.
Such testing is usually repeated to ensure that the exposed and/or injured health-care worker is not infected of those pathogens. As a further precaution, boosting of immunity may simultaneously take place as an additional insurance of safety.
In order to alleviate the dangers associated with needle-stick injuries, some health-care workers have fashioned home-made guards to protect their non-dominant hands. However, these home-made guards are not user-friendly as the health-care workers must make the conscious choice to wear them every time an injection is made.
The health-care workers may sometimes neglect to put them on because they are either inconvenient to use, interfere with the process of administering the Huber needle or the health-care workers may just simply forget to wear them. All of these factors contribute to negating the guards' effectiveness to protect the health-care workers against the dangers of needle-stick injuries.
In view of the above-described shortcomings of conventional needle guards, there exists a need in the art for a safety needle guard which can protect health-care workers against the dangers of needle-stick injuries in a convenient and user-friendly manner. More specifically, there exists a need for a safety needle guard which can be automatically implemented in a user passive manner during the needle injection process so as to consistently protect the health-care workers against the dangers of needle-stick injuries.